Your Arbitration Agreement Might Not Cover What Just Happened

You signed an arbitration agreement on your first day, and it covered a completely different kind of dispute than the one you are dealing with now.

This shows up often enough that federal courts have a specific framework for it.

The federal Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act lets an employee choose court over arbitration for a sexual harassment claim, even in a workplace with a signed arbitration agreement. The Ninth Circuit recently confirmed in Ding v. Structure Therapeutics, Inc. that this protection is not lost just because the employee had already invoked arbitration on a separate, unrelated claim earlier in the same dispute.

If you signed an arbitration agreement and later learned it might reach a harassment claim you were not expecting it to touch, that gap between what you signed and what actually happened is worth a closer look. That is worth walking through before you decide what to do next.

Contact Michael Trust Law, APC for a no-charge initial consultation. The facts determine whether you have a claim – and how much of a conversation that takes.

This post shares general information based on common patterns I see in California workplaces. It is not legal advice, does not create an attorney-client relationship, and outcomes depend on specific facts – no lawyer can guarantee a result. Past results do not guarantee or predict future outcomes. AI may have been used to create this post. All content reviewed by a CA attorney before publication.